Dive Brief:

• In Polk County, Wis., the highway department is spending less on rock salt for winter roads, and a local diary is no longer paying to have brine from the cheese-making process sent to a treatment facility.
• Putting a local resource to work on local roads was an idea that technical manager Emil Norby had in 2008, and he began experiments with the brine, which is 24% to 25% salt by weight.
• F & A Dairy brine allowed the county to reduce its annual purchases of magnesium chloride, the industry standard, with brine that cost only 9 cents/gallon for trucking to county storage tanks.

Dive Insight:

There is a lesson for lots of industries in Norby's pursuing the idea of making use of a local product and turning it from waste to resource in the process. The county gathered data to back up its decision and found that brine worked better than conventional, more expensive wetting agents at keeping roads free of ice. Other communities in the state have also announced that they will experiment with the brine this winter.